I have been in many jails and prisons. Thankfully, I’ve never been in a facility during or immediately after a fire, even a small one. But I’ve seen videos, news reports, and analyses of facility fires with fatalities. When you review all these resources, there is one significant conclusion...

You work in a jail. You probably assess risks every day. Hopefully you are doing fire drills at least quarterly in all facility areas. And yet, when you assess the risk, you might feel you have a higher risk of attempted or completed suicides, particularly with pretrial detainees, than with a significant...

Is your facility near a major highway? Near train tracks? In the flight path of an airport? Tornado alley? Flood zone? Hurricanes? Bomb/WMD threat? What about simply being located near timberland? In the case of the Colorado Department of Corrections , a mass evacuation of inmates was not just a theory...

By Donna Ledbetter, Research and Information Services Division, Writer/Editor In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this week, NIC would like to provide you with resources to find assistance in coping with the tragedy and assisting investigators who are trying to find the source(s)...

Earlier this week a tragic fire occurred in a prison in central Honduras, killing more than 300 inmates. Over half of the facility was impacted by the fire and although the cause of the fire has yet to be determined, the Comayagua prison administrators were immediately suspended. These type of tragedies...

This blog is funded by a contract from the National Institute of Corrections, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions stated in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.